I’ve found the meaning of life.

Do you ever feel like you’re always on autopilot?

I have for most of my life. Wake up, go to school, come home, do homework, watch TV, eat, sleep, repeat. Didn’t really stop to think about why.

Even as I started to do things that were more societally recognized as “meaningful”, like coding projects or working on projects with biotech companies, I still didn’t necessarily keep asking why.

Even if working with a biotech company ➡ helping to solve a problem within human health ➡ positively impacting people, it’s still possible to ask further. Why help people if we’ll all die at some point anyway?

I think a lot of us are scared to ask these kinds of questions. Because they steer dangerously close to the “nothing really matters” territory (a la Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody). We like to believe our life has meaning, because our egos like to make us believe that we are the most important things in the universe.

It’s scary to realize you might just be a speck of dust, floating on a sphere of rock, hurdling towards an untimely demise at some point. In the grand scheme of the universe, one civilization probably doesn’t have much impact, let alone one person….

Existential crisis aside, this is when I turned to Nietzsche. I wanted to learn about whether it’s really true that nothing we choose to do has meaning, or if we can find meaning somewhere.

Nietzsche? Isn’t he the one that said “God is dead, and we have killed him?”

Yes. But he didn’t think . Here was his stance:

• The more we follow scientific evidence, the less reason there is to believe in a God, as we find more scientific explanations for things religion originally gave answers for. Note: this doesn’t mean that science is more “correct” than religion (our past claims get disproven all the time). It just inherently is more objective of a system, as it constantly updates based on evidence, rather than sticking to a specified doctrine like religion.
• He didn’t disapprove of religion, though. Religion is still a useful part of life as of now to explain the things we cannot yet explain, and to bring people together in communities and give them a common goal. A purpose. A meaning of life. And if there’s a chance an afterlife is real and religious people are rewarded there, it makes more sense to be religious and work towards that reality. You’ll either be rewarded, or if there’s no afterlife, gone. There’s no downside.

So is religion the meaning of life then? Doing good things to get into the good side of the afterlife? At least until science gives us an explanation?

I tried to think of alternatives.

Do what your biology tells ya 🧬

We actually inherently know what the meaning of life is. It’s encoded into us.

It’s fulfilment.

The difference between fulfilment and just feeling good is that fulfilment is long term. If you think about a parabola, that’s like optimizing for raising the baseline rather than just bringing the highs higher, through short term pleasures like drugs, food, getting some likes on Instagram, and other forms of instant gratification.

Aka the hedonic treadmill 🏃‍♀️

But what counts as long term?

The things that fulfil us and raise our baseline, in my opinion, can be boiled down to:

• Helping / serving people (whether it’s becoming a doctor or starting an organization to end malaria)
• Discovering more about the universe + ourselves

We feel fulfilled doing this. That was mother nature’s way of rewarding us for helping the greater good, therefore ensuring the survival of our species. Helping the survival of the greater good will always leave more of an impact, and feel more fulfilling, than short term good feelings.

The reason I think discovery fits in is because:

1. It can help us with the goal of helping people (like how discovering new planets could give us new places to live if earth gets destroyed, therefore ensuring our survival and minimizing suffering for the greater good).
2. It also inherently makes us feel good. Humans are one of the most curious species.

The cool thing about my equation meaning of life = helping the greater good + discovering more about the universe is that religion doesn’t have to be separate. You can still be religious for now and believe in helping the greater good, and discovering more.

Side note: I would argue things like avoiding negative feelings and “surviving” are reasons why we do things, but don’t necessarily give us fulfillment, and shouldn’t be the ultimate reason to do something.

It’s fascinating to me that humans spend so much time asking for the meaning of life, after a certain point of maturity, yet the meaning of life has been encoded in us all along. Although I share some differing views from Nietzsche, I’m glad his work led me to these conclusions.

Based on this, I plan to make a list of all the things I spend most of my time on, and whether they align with my equation.

I hope this inspires whoever’s reading this to help people + discover more about the world. Let me know your thoughts!

-Anupra✌